11,000 Russian travellers fly home from Egypt: Dy PM

Some 11,000 Russian tourists have returned home from Egypt in the past 24 hours after Moscow suspended flights to the country over the Sinai plane crash, an official said on Sunday. “Over the past 24 hours some 11,000 people have been flown out,” deputy prime minister Arkady Dvorkovich told reporters, adding that more people were set to return home later in the day.

“On Sunday is the busiest day in this sense,” he said at the Vnukovo airport outside Moscow. He added that Russia was sending a number of experts to inspect Egypt’s airports to see if security needed to be beefed up there.

While it dismissed international suspicions that the Russian jet that crashed on October 31 over the Sinai peninsula with 224 people on board was bombed, Russia halted all flights to Egypt on Friday.